Monitoring respiratory events is of clinical importance in the early detection of potentially fatal conditions. Current technologies involve contact sensors the individual must wear constantly. Such a requirement can lead to patient discomfort, dependency, loss of dignity, and further may fail due to variety of reasons including refusal to wear the monitoring device. Elderly patients and infants are even more likely to suffer from the adverse effects of continued monitoring. Unobtrusive, non-contact, imaging based methods are therefore increasingly needed for monitoring patient respiratory function.
Accordingly, what is needed in this art are sophisticated systems and methods for estimating minute ventilation by analyzing distortions in reflections of structured illumination patterns captured in a video of a patient's chest area.